<\/p>\n
\u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s talk-of-the-town action-comedy epic, is still dominating the mainstream movie discourse, and it\u2019s very easy to see why.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
The film, which hit theaters in September, follows a band of radicals who go into hiding after one resistance mission turns deadly. Cut to 16 years later, washed-up, paranoid revolutionary Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio) has been living off the grid with his self-reliant daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti), after being abandoned by her mother, the former activist Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), as a baby. When Bob\u2019s longtime nemesis, Colonel Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn), resurfaces and Willa goes missing, the former radical and his daughter are forced to battle the consequences of their pasts.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
That\u2019s the shorthand version of a sprawling, nearly three-hour plot packed with themes of political violence, power, white supremacy, good vs. evil and so much more. As overloaded as that sounds, Anderson pulls it off with an uber talented ensemble cast \u2014 which includes Regina Hall, Benicio del Toro, Wood Harris, Tony Goldwyn and rapper Junglepussy \u2014 and a bonkers plot that\u2019s as chaotic as it is compelling.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
After seeing the film myself, I can say the hype is just about everything critics have hailed it to be, for the most part anyway. It\u2019s bold, kinetic, thrilling, highly entertaining and so nerve-racking that you might be on the edge of your seat the entire time, especially during the car chase scenes at the end. As far as performances go, Infiniti is the biggest standout, even as a newcomer making her film debut. Taylor is a close second, even though her presence is limited to the first act.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
Those are some of the film\u2019s strengths, but calling it a \u201cmasterpiece,\u201d as some critics have, is a stretch, in my opinion, largely due to some of the questionable racial dynamics that undercut the storytelling. The issues begin with the fetishization of Taylor\u2019s character and continue through a subplot involving Willa\u2019s mixed-race parentage \u2014 namely, a paternity case between Bob and Lockjaw, on account of an assumed one night stand the latter and Perfidia had. That fact later complicates Lockjaw\u2019s membership to an elite white supremacist club, which is a whole other ordeal that leans way too much on Perfidia as a plot device instead of a whole being \u2014 which feels especially uncomfortable given her absence for most of the movie.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
But even with those flaws, I still enjoyed \u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d for what it was, an adrenaline-fueled ride. Some dots just needed more connecting for it to make better sense.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
\u201cOne Battle After Another\u201d is now playing in theaters.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u2018 The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n \u2018 Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.celebrity.land \u2019 <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cOne Battle After Another,\u201d Paul Thomas Anderson\u2019s talk-of-the-town action-comedy epic, is still dominating the mainstream movie discourse, and it\u2019s very easy to see why. The film, which hit theaters in September, follows a band of radicals who go into hiding after one resistance mission turns deadly. Cut to 16 years later, washed-up, paranoid revolutionary Bob […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2116612,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jnews-multi-image_gallery":[],"jnews_single_post":[],"jnews_primary_category":[],"jnews_social_meta":[],"footnotes":""},"categories":[25172],"tags":[23666,333476,352328],"class_list":["post-2116611","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-entertainment","tag-leonardo-dicaprio","tag-paul-thomas-anderson","tag-teyana-taylor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/10\/The-1-Problem-With-\u2018One-Battle-After-Another.jpeg","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116611","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2116611"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116611\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2116613,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2116611\/revisions\/2116613"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2116612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2116611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2116611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/celebrity.land\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2116611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}